Here, you are urged and encouraged to run your mouths about something important.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

How Barack Obama could lose the Media in his second term

In Lyndon Johnson's second term, it was his failures in Vietnam; Watergate broke in Richard Nixon's first term but took him down after reelection; Iran-Contra dogged Ronald Reagan; Bill Clinton was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice late in his second term; and George W. Bush's second term was marred with failures in Iraq, a stalled agenda, and a mortgage crisis that hit just as he was leaving office. Taken together, these realities do not portend well for Barack Obama in the next four years. However, Obama has something none of the aforementioned presidents did - an unyieldingly complicit media.

Like Nixon, signs of scandal reared their heads toward the end of Obama's first term but unlike Watergate, disinterest throughout the mainstream media - save for a few exceptions - has been palpable. As Nixon was being sworn in for a second time, the likes of Woodward and Bernstein were doing all they could to get the truth out. Today, there is more than enough smoke - both literally and figuratively - when it comes to what happened in Benghazi, Libya on 9/11/12 for the media to replicate its success.

Yet, it seems collectively disinterested.

Economic realities may do to Barack Obama what legitimate journalism will not. The former could end up being the catalyst for the latter.

It's time for a self-evident truth. Liberal, socialist economic policies are doomed to failure and always have been. It is as predictable as the sun coming up, water boiling at 212 degrees, or an apple falling to the earth when you let go of it. This necessarily means that Barack Obama's economic policies will fail as well. They've failed already and although there is pain felt as a result of runaway debt, deficits, and unemployment, there is not enough for the media to do its job.

That could change (don't laugh).

Almost immediately after Obama was re-elected, companies began announcing layoffs. People have been getting out of the stock market and moving to cash and gold. Taxes are going up on everyone and talk of a fiscal cliff, which was largely ignored by the media before the election, is now being given more attention.

Let's face it. The United States is likely headed for economic collapse. We may have been headed there even if Mitt Romney had won. Much has been baked in to the Obama economy already. Talk of repealing Obamacare was just that - talk. Even among Republicans, there were discussions about keeping part of the law. Imagine a scenario whereby the economy Romney inherited was too much to overcome and it collapsed on his watch in a year or two; it would be his fault because it would have happened on his watch.

Fiscal signs are pointing to rising food prices, runaway inflation, and higher unemployment in the coming months and years. It will all happen on Obama's watch and it will all have been his doing (blaming Bush at that point could cause even his most sycophantic media allies to roll their eyes). Misery will befall many more Americans. At some point, reality smacks everyone in the face, including liberal media types who continue down the track, despite the whistle and headlight of an oncoming train getting closer.

As Benghazi-gate chugs along - now thanks to the added element of a sexual scandal involving the CIA Director - the economy will continue to get worse. Barack Obama will lose more and more Americans who will eventually realize that they have been foolishly duped, thereby making them even angrier. Like two elevators, as the economy descends, interest in what really happened in Benghazi could rise. People who have traditionally sat on the sidelines of the political playing field will start to take notice because their own lives will be affected, ironically because of their own indifference for so many years.

Moreover, once the truth about what happened in Benghazi is revealed, it could very well be worse than all of the other second term presidential scandals combined.

For years, one of Barack Obama's credos has been to never let a crisis go to waste. He used the mortgage crisis to push for the Stimulus package; he used the lie that is global warming to push for cap and trade and green energy, which has done nothing but line the pockets of his political cronies while bankrupting America; he pointed to the number of guns going to Mexico from America as evidence that tighter gun control was needed (never mind that his Justice Department was actually involved in facilitating that crisis).

Obama's ideological mentor - Saul Alinsky - taught that all events of a period should be used to one's own advantage. Another self-evident truth is that Obama very much groks that idea. Unfortunately for him, there will come a point when he will no longer be able to do that because a crisis will one day be created that - no matter how it is spun - will spin right back to him.

Though it would come at great expense to the nation, Barack Obama might just lose the media. It will have been a shame that it took them so long to do their jobs.

When the bells of two elevators sound, one could be the economy reaching the ground floor and the other could be Benghazi-gate reaching the top of the media's ivory tower.